Completion 蓮香

When I was little, one highlight in my rather dull week was having dim sum very early in the morning with my grandmother on a non-school day.  It was our time together and dim sum was done the way it was meant to be - one type of tea and two choices of dim sum 一盅两件.  I was an easy to please child.  The humongous lotus seed buns with a whole salted egg yolk, packed with saturated fat and cholesterol put a big smile on my face.
 
The tea house we went to was a 500 square foot street level shop three blocks away from home.  The presentation and ordering of food was very interactive.  Diners examined the steamers stacked on a metal tray that the staff carried around.  It was loud, the tile floor was wet, and the food rustic.  It was the little dim sum world that my Grandma shared with me.  
 
I stopped going to dim sum with Grandma when I went through my rebellious teenage year.  Then Grandma passed away when I was 16.  The dingy tea house we frequented disappeared and on that very same spot, a new “luxurious apartment building” replaced the building with herbal shops, tea house and a bakery.     
 
A friend was working on a project on dim sum and we quickly formed a small group of dim sum buster to try out a list of restaurants in town.  We went to very nice places with dim sum so well made that I could imagine them being food for Kings were they made 100 years earlier.  Yet, something was missing.  The name Lin Heung popped up during one of the dim sum sessions and I was very determined to get the group to go and I got what I wished for.  The breakfast was supposed to start at 8am but I was so eager to fill the empty spot in my heart, I was there by 7:30am.
 
The place was grand compared to my little tea house.  The food, whilst old school, was not quite the same as what I had either.  I munched away and happy memories of my dim sum highlight came back.  The part when I refused to go for dim sum with Grandma could not be changed and there will always be an imperfection in my book as a result.  However, I think I know why Grandma took me.  Dim sum wasn’t just about eating your breakfast.  It was a place where everybody knows your name (Yay! Cheers!)  You learn not to waste your food and be grateful for the treat. It’s a place where Chinese people feel uninhibited to express their opinion (Boy!  It’s been so long since I last heard about the 3 years and 8 months of Japanese occupation). And you learn not to be an introvert when you need to fight for your dim sum and strangers sitting at the same table might strike up weird conversations (Oh!  This time I am not Korean with plastic surgery or FOB mainland Chinese. I am Singaporean now).  And of course, you work out the rules whilst things seem to be chaotic (important life lesson)

I am going to make it a monthly activity with the Changster and I hope she won’t tell me to “drop me off two blocks away from school and STOP following me around” when she’s 15.
 
Thank you my friends who woke up early for my rather selfish excursion